Product ReviewsMultimedia hardware
While Bluetooth headsets for mobile phones have been reasonably popular for some years, the same can't be said for headphones employing the same wireless technology. The main reason for this is that audio fidelity is far more important when you're listening to music, even on an iPod, than it is when you're talking on the phone. And the compression algorithms used in most Bluetooth transceivers just aren't up to the job. Sennheiser's solution is two-fold. The first is the headphones. The PX 210 BT are designed for easy portability and so are smaller than standard hi-fi headphones and can be folded up to make them easier to carry. They work with any Bluetooth 2.1 device that broadcasts audio and
The other half of the equation is the BTD 300i Bluetooth audio transmitter, which has an iPod Dock connector on one end. With this connected, your iPod or iPhone will pass its audio out through the Dock connector and the BT 300i will handle the compression and transmission. We found that the improvement in audio quality when using the BTD 300i to transmit audio was huge. Even when compared with Bluetooth audio transmitted from a MacBook, the BTD 300i was miles ahead. Audio was crisper, clearer and without any interference whatsoever. The native Bluetooth output from our MacBook, by contrast, sounded like a crackly FM radio. We have a couple of minor complaints about the PX 210 BT headphones. First off, we found them uncomfortable to wear for long periods of time. This was due to a combination of the earpieces and the arms of this reviewer's spectacles. Second, we also found the blue light on the side of one earpiece, which flashes when the headphones are switched on, to be very distracting to anyone within a few metres of the wearer. If you can live with that, and are prepared to pay £200 for the freedom afforded by wireless headphones, this combination is an excellent choice. By Kenny Hemphill |
|||||||||||||||||
